{"id":29081,"date":"2024-01-04T16:46:24","date_gmt":"2024-01-04T16:46:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.heals.com\/blog\/?p=29081"},"modified":"2024-01-04T16:46:55","modified_gmt":"2024-01-04T16:46:55","slug":"dodie-smith-heals-toy-buyer-novelist-and-dalmatian-devotee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.heals.com\/blog\/dodie-smith-heals-toy-buyer-novelist-and-dalmatian-devotee\/","title":{"rendered":"Dodie Smith: Heal\u2019s toy buyer, novelist and Dalmatian devotee"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Did you know that there is a connection between The Hundred and One Dalmatians<\/em> and Heal\u2019s? The classic story that brought us the spotted pup obsessed Cruella de Vil, was written by none other than a former Heal\u2019s employee, Dodie Smith. Before Dodie became a successful writer, she worked on the shopfloor at Heal\u2019s in the 1920s and 30s, selling toys and gifts in the store\u2019s Little Gallery. It was never Dodie\u2019s dream to work at Heal\u2019s, but after an unsuccessful attempt at becoming a stage actress, she was in need of a steady job. Her biographer, Valerie Grove, wrote that Dodie went to her interview at Heal\u2019s in 1923 \u2018with a heavy heart\u2019 and she was \u2018not temperamentally suited to the shopgirl\u2019s humdrum life of clocking in from nine to six.\u2019 Despite her reluctance to enter a \u2018humdrum\u2019 working life, Dodie worked at Heal\u2019s for nearly a decade, and her time at the store became one of the most important periods of her life.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
Dodie Smith surrounded by toys in Heal\u2019s Little Gallery in the 1920\u2019s.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n

Not only did Dodie have a successful professional career at the store, but she also entered a defining chapter of her personal life since it was at Heal\u2019s where she began a romantic relationship with the store\u2019s director, Ambrose Heal. Dodie was known at Heal\u2019s for her offbeat personality and quirky appearance, and this eccentricity caught the attention of the married Ambrose Heal who began a flirtatious relationship with her in her first three years at the store. It wasn\u2019t until 1927 that their affair officially began, and at this time Ambrose was also romantically involved with another Heal\u2019s employee, Prudence Maufe. However, Ambrose and Dodie\u2019s relationship was not simply romantic, and Ambrose also became a supporter of Dodie\u2019s writing career.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before Dodie began writing novels, she wrote for the stage, and since Ambrose was an admirer of theatre, he was attracted to her ambition to become a playwright. His support for her writing began when he shared her first staged play, Autumn Crocus,<\/em> with the producer Nigel Playfair, who praised her writing and made a move to put it on, but was outbid by his rival producer, Basil Dean. Ambrose also contributed to Dodie\u2019s second play, Service<\/em>, a play set at a family owned department store directly based off of Heal\u2019s. The play\u2019s lead, Gabriel Service, was the Ambrose Heal of the fictional \u2018Service\u2019s\u2019 department store, and Ambrose even supplied Heal\u2019s furniture for the sets. These two plays cemented Dodie as a successful playwright in London, and eventually gained her recognition in America when Autumn Crocus<\/em> went to Broadway. This play also garnered Dodie the first film adaptation of her work in 1934, casting her into the mainstream entertainment industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
A poster for the 1934 film version of Autumn Crocus <\/em>starring Fay Compton and Ivor Novello.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n

In these same years, Dodie also met Alec Beesley, a fellow Heal\u2019s co-worker and the man who would become her future husband. Things became rather tangled when Dodie entered this love triangle with two of her colleagues, and eventually she ended the affair with Ambrose in 1932 and married Alec in 1939. Even though their romantic relationship ended, Ambrose and Dodie did remain friends and he continued to support her plays, even serving as a backer for her fourth play Bonnet Over the Windmill<\/em> in 1937. Ultimately, with her success as a playwright, Dodie no longer needed to work at Heal\u2019s, but she continued to work irregular short shifts as a toy buyer until 1932. Dodie\u2019s work in the toy department is especially relevant this year since Heal\u2019s has reintroduced toys to the store for the first time in nearly a decade. We may not have the whimsical Dodie Smith to sell toys anymore, but it is fun to imagine the children\u2019s author helping children and parents pick out the perfect toy. Photographs of Dodie at work in the Little Gallery in the 1920s show her surrounded by stuffed animals, rocking horses, dolls, and even a toy Heal\u2019s delivery coach. The toys currently for sale at the store are similar to what Dodie was selling a century ago: a colourful range of stuffed animals, dolls, and wooden playsets by Little Dutch, OYOY, and Vitra. Reintroducing toys to the store this season came just in time for the holidays, which has always been a favourite time of year at Heal\u2019s. A Heal\u2019s Christmas poster from when Dodie worked at the store depicts Noah\u2019s Ark, with the slogan \u2018Heal\u2019s Ark is a refuge in the flood of Christmas Shopping.\u2019 Fittingly, one of our new toys this year is a wooden Noah\u2019s Ark playset by Little Dutch that recalls this historic Christmas poster. It is fair to say that Dodie was so enthusiastic about Christmas time at Heal\u2019s that she continued to run the toy department at Christmas until 1931, even when she was only working a few hours a week.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
Left: The 1930\u2019s \u2018Heal\u2019s Ark\u2019 Christmas poster.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
Right: Noah\u2019s Ark wooden playset by Little Dutch now available at Heal\u2019s.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n

To conclude the Dodie Smith story, her fascination with Dalmatians began in 1934 when she received her first Dalmatian as a birthday gift from her husband. She named the dog Pongo, which later became the name of her canine hero in The Hundred in One Dalmatians<\/em>. Pongo also served as inspiration for Cruella de Vil\u2019s iconic black and white fashion when Dodie\u2019s friend, the actress Joyce Kennedy, told her that Pongo \u2018would make a nice fur coat.\u2019 Dodie herself was also very fashionable, making her own unique clothes when she first began working at Heal\u2019s, so her own love of fashion could have served as inspiration for Cruella\u2019s couture craze. The book was published in 1956 and Disney made it into a film shortly after in 1961, beginning the first of several remakes to come in the following decades, including Cruella<\/em> in 2021. This most recent adaptation gives the imagined backstory of Cruella de Vil, and in the film the young Cruella even works as a cleaner at Liberty department store in London before becoming a villainous fashion designer. This shopgirl to celebrity parallel between Dodie and Cruella cleverly tips a cap to Dodie\u2019s own backstory at Heal\u2019s.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
Dodie with her first Dalmatian Pongo in 1934.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n

In a 1957 letter to Walt Disney, Dodie thanked him for turning the book into a film, writing \u2018I always hoped you might\u2014so much so that, when I was writing it, I often found myself visualising the scenes as they would be in cartoon.\u2019 Even though nearly thirty years had passed between Dodie\u2019s work at Heal\u2019s and her publication of The Hundred and One Dalmatians<\/em>, it is clear that her years at Heal\u2019s helped her begin a successful career as a writer. The \u2018humdrum\u2019 shopgirl job that Dodie was so reluctant to accept, gave her the financial stability to support a writing career, and introduced her to people who also supported her ambitions. She was a dreamer who set her mind to the life she wanted and did what she had to do to make it a reality, even if that meant giving up her dreams of acting to work at a department store. So next time you read or watch The Hundred and One Dalmatians, <\/em>just remember that the woman behind the classic once only daydreamed of entertaining the world with her stories while she sold toys at Heal\u2019s.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
A first edition copy of The Hundred and One Dalmatians.<\/em><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

For further reading on Dodie Smith please refer to Valerie Grove\u2019s biography, Dear Dodie: The Life of Dodie Smith.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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